I think I agree with your overall approach – that people should individually decide what itches they want to scratch and how much work they put into it. What annoys me here is the sheer quantity of companies who not only don’t engage with the FOSS using community but don’t even get the mindset. They still think in terms of “we produce the product, you buy the product, and that’s the only direction information will flow”. Consumers everywhere – not just FOSS enthusiasts – are wanting dialogue, not dictation; they set up websites to help each-other for even the most costly of proprietary programs or devices.

It’s easy to get a product to work with Linux if the process is started early on in its cycle, and often that’s completely compatible with developing a product to work with the other major operating systems. (E.g. by using Qt as a windowing toolkit.)

As a further illustration of this, companies are finding that if they try to use FOSS without obeying the license then it is increasingly difficult to get away with it. If a company like Cisco can’t get away with embedding Busybox and other GPL software, then chances are Random Software Company won’t either. Then, after the lawsuit, they seem to mostly choose the most difficult and costly way of complying with the GPL. And yet most of the time all they need to do to comply is to make the code available with the device and everyone would be happy.

But ultimately I see Linus’ idea that world domination will be achieved as “a totally unintended side-effect” (to shuffle his words around a bit) as being the best way of proceeding. Trying to duplicate everything that Apple or Microsoft do is a good way to always remain second best. Where FOSS has succeeded, and made the big corporations change their game, is where we have simply set our own course to write the best software we can and forced them to play catch-up.

Have fun,

Paul

Fedora makes a stand against proprietary formats, which I really admire, but at the end of the day I don’t think that most people will change. Personally I choose to store all my music in FLAC, ripped from CDs. I’ve never bought music online because I can’t find anywhere that sells it in an open lossless format.

-c

_Do they_ want those formats?
Or is it just that they don’t have any choice? And, if so, is that because no one has taken a stand on the issue?